Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Don't show me this message again

Fra Giacomo

Introduction

Given Coles’s active participation in the Stuttgart opera, it is perhaps not surprising that his affinities for post-Wagnerian opera should be evinced in his last, and arguably finest, work that survives intact, Fra Giacomo, a scena for baritone and orchestra. Coles took his text from Robert Williams Buchanan’s eponymous poem, published in 1901 (in the complete edition of Buchanan’s poetry). Though now little known, Buchanan enjoyed a certain vogue at the end of the nineteenth century for his macabre, shadowy, and often disturbing verse. This was certainly true of ‘Meg Blane’, which formed the subject of Coleridge-Taylor’s choral rhapsody in 1902, and ‘Fra Giacomo’, a lurid tale of revenge, is no exception. The tale, told in the first person by a Venetian merchant (probably during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance), begins with the urgent summoning of Fra Giacomo to the merchant’s house. He is to give last rites to the merchant’s dying wife. On arrival he is too late; she has died. Fra Giacomo is, nevertheless, detained while the merchant gives an engaging account of his romantic past, how he met his wife six years ago, how he fell in love with her, saw off all-comers, and married her. Yet his wife’s pious obser­vances and regular confession caused him to mistrust her, and one day he donned a monk’s clothing and listened, in place of her normal priest, to her confession. There, digging his nails into his palms, he discovers that his wife’s lover is none other than Fra Giacomo. At this point the monk understands the real motivation for his summons. The merchant’s wife has been poisoned and, having drunk a toast to the ‘saint upstairs at rest’, Fra Giacomo is to suffer a similar fate. At the hands of the merchant, his end is violent and his body is thrown into the canal, while orders are given for all the bells to toll at the convent.

Coles’s interpretation of Buchanan’s text is nothing short of masterly. His consummate understanding of Wagner’s seamless symphonic process, in which the orchestra plays the dominant role in terms of continuity and thematic develop­ment, is highly impressive. Moreover, in common with his post-Wagnerian contemporaries Strauss, Pfitzner, and Schreker, he exhibits that innate ability to create musical ideas that concisely represent underlying pictorial or abstract images. This is potently demonstrated in the chromatically descending ‘death’ motif (synonymous with the merchant), which domi­nates the first part of the scena in a portentous C minor and forms the momentous climax of the conclusion. Fra Giacomo’s fragment of pseudo-plainsong, announced in the brass, is also highly distinctive, and is used most effectively when it under­pins the merchant’s own scheme of hearing his wife’s confes­sion (‘In the Father Confessor’s place’). Here, with a dramatic subtlety worthy of Wagner, Fra Giacomo’s guilt is revealed. In addition to the brilliant and colourful orchestration (which is often reduced to pointillistic chamber music), Coles’s tonal scheme is also worthy of comment. Though based around C minor, much of the chromatic nuance is generated by the constant interjection of D flat. This pitch not only provides an unsettling Neapolitan inflection but also a means of modula­tion to A flat, a key which features prominently across the larger canvas. Of greatest impact, however, are the statements of the ‘death’ motif during the final act of murder (‘Take this! And this! And this!’) which are juxtaposed, first in C minor, and then in C sharp minor. Furthermore it is to C sharp minor that the climax recovers (‘Come raise him up, Pietro’) before C major reasserts itself as part of a declaration of heartrending regret, marked by the entry of a plaintive solo violin.

Recordings

Cecil Coles was killed near the Somme on 26 April 1918 during a heroic attempt to rescue some wounded comrades. He was one of the most talented of the composers who lost their lives in the First World War, yet few remember him now. Travelling on a ...» More

Details

Alas Fra Giacomo too late! But follow me …
She is dead, quite dead you see.
Poor little lady! she lies,
All the light quite gone out of her eyes!
But her features still wear that soft, grey,
Meditative expression,
Which you must have noticed oft’
Thro’ the peephole, at confession.
How saintly she looks, how meek!
Tho’ this be the chamber of death,
I fancy I feel her breath
As I kiss her on the cheek.
Ay, Father, let us go down!
But first, if it please you, your blessing.

Wine? Come, come, you must!
Blessing it with your prayers you’ll quaff a cup I trust,
To the health of the saint upstairs.
You’ll sit, Fra Giacomo?
Heigh-ho! ’tis now six summers
Since I saw that angel and married her …
I was passing rich, and I carried her
Off in the face of all comers …
So fresh, yet so brimming with soul!
A sweeter morsel, I swear,
Never made the dull black cowl
Of a monk’s eye glitter and glare!

Your pardon!
Nay, keep your chair! …
A jest! but a jest!
Very true,
It is hardly becoming to jest,
And the saint upstairs at rest …
Her soul may be list’ning, too!
To think how I doubted and doubted,
Suspected, grumbled at, flouted
That golden-haired angel and solely
Because she was zealous and holy!

And while she was named and elected
For place on the heav’nly roll,
I (beast that I was) suspected
Her manner of saving her soul …
So half for the fun of the thing,
What did I (blasphemer) but fling
On my shoulders the gown of a monk
And seat me half sober, half drunk
With the cowl drawn over my face,
In the Father Confessor’s place.
Eheu benedicite!

In her beautiful sweet simplicity,
With that pensive grey expression,
She sighfully knelt at confession,
While I bit my lips till they bled,
And dug my nails in my palm,
As I heard, with averted head
The horrible words come calm
Each word was a serpent’s sting;
But, wrapt in my gloomy gown,
I sat like a marble thing
As she uttered your name.
Sit down!
More wine, Fra Giacomo?

One cup as you love me!
Come drink! ’t’will bring the streaks
Of crimson back to your cheeks!
Come drink to the saint,
Whose virtues you loved to paint.
Who, stretched on her wifely bed,
With the soft, grey, melancholy expression
Lies poisoned, overhead!
Thank Montepulciano for giving
Your death in such delicate sips!

’Tis not ev’ry monk ceases living
With such a fine taste on his lips!
But lest Montepulciano unsurely should kiss,
Take this! And this! And this!

Come raise him up, Pietro,
And cast him into the deep canal below:
You can be secret, lad, I know …
And hark you, then to the convent go …
Bid ev’ry bell in the convent toll,
And the monks say prayers, for your mistress’s soul.